561. To explain what a remnant is: It is not just the good and true things that we learn out of the Lord's Word from the time we are small and that become stamped on our memory. It is also all the states that rise out of those things, such as a state of innocence from babyhood, a state of love for our parents, siblings, teachers, and friends, a state of charity toward our neighbor and compassion toward the poverty-stricken and needy. In short, it is all states of goodness or truth.

These states, along with the good and true things imprinted on our memory, are called a remnant. The Lord preserves them in us, hiding them away in our inner being without our slightest awareness and carefully separating them from the things that are our own — in other words, from evil and falsity.

The Lord preserves all these states in us in such a way that not even the least significant of them is lost. This I learned from the fact that every one of our states from infancy to extreme old age not only remains in the other life but even returns. When we relive them, they are identical to the experience we first lived through in the world. This happens not only with the good and true things etched on our memory but also with any state of innocence or charity we have experienced. In addition, each and every one of our states of evil and falsity (or malice and delusion) remains and returns as well, in all its minutest detail. And when the latter states come back to us, the Lord tempers them by means of the former. All of which shows that if we had no remnant, we could not help being damned for eternity (see above at §468).

468. Inner Meaning

WHAT was stated and demonstrated in the last chapter shows that names symbolize heresies and doctrines, ¹ and this in turn suggests that the names in the present chapter stand not for individuals but for some larger entity. Here they symbolize the doctrines — the churches — that were preserved (despite undergoing changes) from the time of the earliest church up to Noah.

A church tends to dwindle over time, however, until at last it remains with only a few. The few among whom it remained at the time of the Flood were called Noah.

[2] The waning of the true church until it remains with a few can be seen from other churches that likewise shrank. The remaining few are called "survivors" or "a remnant" in the Word, where they are described as being in the middle or heart of the land. ²

The situation is the same in general as it is in particular; in other words, what holds true for the church holds true for individual people. Unless the Lord preserved a remnant in each of us, we could only succumb to eternal death, because the remnant holds spiritual and heavenly life within it. ³ Likewise at the general or universal level, unless there were always some with whom the church or true faith survived, the human race would come to an end. For the sake of a handful, we know, the city and in fact the whole nation is preserved. ⁴

This is mirrored in the human heart. As long as the heart is healthy, the surrounding organs thrive. When it ails, all the organs deteriorate and the person dies.

The last survivors, [or remnants,] are what Noah symbolizes, since aside from him the whole earth was corrupt, as Genesis 6:12 makes clear.

[3] Remaining traces in each individual and in the church are discussed by the prophets in many places, as in Isaiah:

The one left in Zion and the one remaining in Jerusalem will be called holy to him — everyone in Jerusalem assigned to life — when the Lord has cleansed the filth of Zion's daughters and washed away the blood of Jerusalem from its midst. (Isaiah 4:3-4)

What is left — symbolizing the survivors of the church and the remnant in the people of the church — is here described as being holy. After all, those left in Zion and Jerusalem could not have been holy just because they were left there. Likewise in the same author:

It will be in that day that the survivors of Israel and the refugees of Jacob's house will no longer continue to lean on the one that strikes them; and it will lean on Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, in truthfulness. The survivors will return, the survivors of Jacob, to the mighty God. (Isaiah 10:20-21, 22)

In Jeremiah:

In those days and at that time there will be a search for Israel's wickedness, but it will not be there, and for Judah's sins, and they will not be found, because I will pardon the one whom I make a remainder. (Jeremiah 50:20)

In Micah:

The survivors of Jacob in the midst of many peoples will be like dew from Jehovah, like showers on the grass. (Micah 5:7)

[4] The remainder or remnant in a person or in the church was also represented by tithes, or portions equaling one tenth, which were holy. As a result, the number ten was also holy, and this is why ten is associated with remnants, as it is in Isaiah:

Jehovah will take humankind away, but a great [portion] will be left in the middle of the land. And a tenth will remain there and return but is destined for expulsion, like an oak or a holm oak when its stump is cast out. Its stump is holy seed. (Isaiah 6:12-13)

Here the remainder is called a holy stump. In Amos:

This is what the Lord Jehovih has said: "The city going out as a thousand will leave one hundred remaining, and the one going out as a hundred will leave ten remaining to the house of Israel." (Amos 5:3)

These places and many others in their inner meaning symbolize and describe a remnant. The fact that a city is preserved for the sake of the church's survivors can be seen from what Abraham said of Sodom:

Abraham said, "Perhaps ten may be found there." And [Jehovah] said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of ten." (Genesis 18:32)

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